Blind faith at 200 mph

Jay Blake once had a picture of himself in his office: He was 3 years old, standing over his pedal tractor that he had tipped over a tool box to work on.

“The mechanical aspect of cars has been with me forever,” Mr. Blake, now 46, said, adding that his older brother, a drag race car driver, introduced him to the motor sport. “Drag racing is more of a challenge and I fell in love with it.”

His dream and passion was always to own a professional auto racing team.

Today, Mr. Blake is the crew chief of the Permatek/Follow A Dream alcohol funny car team. On race day, his job is to work on the left side of the motor and manage the spark plugs. The most important tools in his toolbox, however, aren’t wrenches or sockets; instead, it’s determination, a positive attitude, a strong foundation and education, passion and teamwork.

Mr. Blake wears the colors of his team — orange and blue — and his hands are stained black with grease, as are those of his crew. What sets him apart is the red and white cane — it, too, stained with grease — he unfolds to walk, and the story of how an accident took the life he knew but gave him his dream.

It was a Thursday — May 22, 1997, to be exact — and the 31-year-old woke up as he did every other day, went to his job as head mechanic for a transportation company. At 5:30 p.m., he was working on a forklift wheel and the tire assembly exploded in his face, lifting him 15 feet off the ground and propelling him 30 feet through the air.

His face was destroyed. The odds of him surviving were slim. Surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital rebuilt his face and implanted two prosthetic eyes. Mr. Blake lost his sight, and senses of smell and taste, but three-and-a-half weeks after the accident he was able to walk out of the hospital.

“My entire world was changed — the way I viewed it, the way I interpreted it, the way I lived it,” Mr. Blake, who lives in Marstons Mills, told a group of students last night at Porter and Chester Institute on Flanders Road.

Mr. Blake attended The Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton after the accident.

“When I went to the Carroll School, I went in with an open mind. A desire to learn everything they could teach me,” Mr. Blake said.

While he as at the Carroll Center, a teacher asked him to write a paper on his fantasy job, a job that he said he couldn’t do because he was blind. So he wrote the paper he has been writing all his life — about working on a professional racing team.

One day, a friend invited him to go to Pennsylvania for a National Hot Rod Association drag race. But having lost his senses of sight, smell and taste, he was hesitant and unsure if he would enjoy what was once his passion.

“I was full of fear and anxiety; I didn’t want to go,” Mr. Blake recalled. “We got there on a Friday. My heart started pounding. My adrenaline started to flow. I felt alive. I had to be part of it.”

By that Sunday he was overwhelmed.

“I jumped up, threw my arms in the air, and said, ‘I am going for it. I am going to make it happen,’ ” Mr. Blake said. “I had decided to start my own race team.”

He returned home with determination and a belief in himself that he could indeed do it. What he didn’t have was money or any idea how to start a business. He met with advertisers and business people, and enrolled in a marketing and business course. He convinced his older brother to join him in the venture.

“I wasn’t going to let the blindness stop me. I was going to show everybody that even though I couldn’t see, I could still do it,” Mr. Blake said, adding that he soon realized he couldn’t do it all on his own.

In December 1999, he had formed Follow A Dream, a nonprofit to education children and adults about the power of positive thinking, education and determination. Today, Follow A Dream is a NHRA Top Alcohol Funny Car team of 10 people, with championships to their name.

“In life, if you have a goal you can get there,” Mr. Blake said. “It may take a long time to get there, just keep going.”

Mr. Blake is still going. He is working on a project — admittedly a project that is coming together slowly — where he plans to go to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah and become the fastest blind man in the world. There, he will drive his Permatek funny car, which reaches speeds as high as 260 mph.

“I had a choice to live or die after the accident,” Mr. Blake said. “I had a near-death experience. It was very powerful, and I swore that I’d never again get caught up in the rat race of life and forget all things I am grateful for. I am very grateful for everything I have.”